An unconditional Union meeting was held at Woodbury, Md., on the 20th inst., at which Joseph J. Stewart, Esq., delivered an eloquent speech on the emancipation question. His views may be inferred from the following concise extract:
FELLOW CITIZENS: We are for the Union unconditionally, believing the preservation of our National integrity of the first importance. We are for the suppression of the rebellion, and endorse the policy adopted by the Administration for its suppression.
We believe this war to have been caused by slavery, and to be carried on in the interest of slavery, and that any terms of peace which look to the perpetuation of slavery will prove but a hollow truce.
We are, therefore, for emancipation.
Slavery is the corner stone of the new Government, with which the oligarchs of the South would supplant the Government of our fathers, and the rebellion is strongest where slavery is strongest. In our own State the slave-holding counties are most deeply imbued with the spirit of rebellion. The rebellion is but slavery organized, and every blow struck at slavery injures both. They stand or fall together.
Emancipation is the means whereby freedom, the antagonist of slavery, strikes down the power which sustains rebellion. Had all the States been free States we should have had no civil war, and the surest way to end the war is to remove the cause of it.
Let us begin with ourselves. Let us emancipate first our minds from the political thraldom of the accursed institution which is making war upon us and upon all free government, and then legally emancipate the State from its presence by calling a Convention to remodel the Constitution.
This will improve the value of our lands—it will dignify labor—if will invite large investments of capital in manufactures and internal improvements—it will destroy privileged classes—it will relieve our statute books of anomalous laws passed for the protection of slavery, our courts from the expensive administration of said laws, and our country jails from being negro boarding houses.
The Hillsdale Standard, Hillsdale, MI, November 10, 1863
